Funny, it appears to be even drier than my recipe... only 5.6 fluid ounces of water vs. 7 fluid ounces in my recipe. This jibes with what Tom Lehmann says about thin crust -- that there should still be raw flour in the bowl after everything has been mixed and kneaded. When I use 7 fl. ounces in my recipe, there is raw flour in the bowl, but it eventually incorporates into the dough ball. Sounds like I should be using even less water!

Also, I wrote to Pizza Inn several years ago asking for their thin crust recipe and here's the response I got:

Quote

The ingredients are only a portion of the recipe along how long to mix, proof time, etc., which are equally as important and equally as proprietary. Ingredients and training materials are only available to franchised Pizza Inn owners.

Put water, and yeast in mixing bowl and stir together to suspend the yeast. Add remainder of ingredients, except the oil, and mix (Hobart Mixer with dough hook) for four minutes at flow speed, then add the oil and mix 1 minute at low speed, then 8 minutes at medium speed.

(My comment: I find it interesting that this recipe follows the advice of Tom Lehmann where the oil is added 4 minutes into the kneading process)

Take the dough to the bench and scale into desired weight pieces, form each piece into a round ball.

Place the dough balls on a sheet pan or in a dough box, wipe each dough ball with oil and place in the refrigerator for storage up of 1 – 3 days. Dough balls are ready to use after 12-14 hours in the cooler.

When needed, remove a quantity of dough balls from the refrigerator, allow them to warm slightly at room temperature (60 to 90 minutes) flour the dough ball, and sheet to desired thickness and diameter, or if desired, the dough may be hand stretched or tossed to obtain desired thickness and diameter.

Dock the dough and put it onto a pan, screen, disk or oven peel (use parchment paper or fine corn meal to facilitate sliding the dough off of the peel onto the baking surface).

Add sauce, cheese and other desired toppings, then take directly to the oven for baking.

*This flour works well for a "restaurant pizza" where the pie will be consumed shortly after baking. When a "carryout" or "home delivered" pizza is made, flour with a protein content of 12 to 13% will produce a more tender eating crust.

Baking Temp

450 – 500°F for approximately 8-10 minutes in a deck oven.450 – 465°F for approximately 6.5 to 7.5 minutes in an impingement oven

Funny, it appears to be even drier than my recipe... only 5.6 fluid ounces of water vs. 7 fluid ounces in my recipe. This jibes with what Tom Lehmann says about thin crust -- that there should still be raw flour in the bowl after everything has been mixed and kneaded. When I use 7 fl. ounces in my recipe, there is raw flour in the bowl, but it eventually incorporates into the dough ball. Sounds like I should be using even less water!

Also, I wrote to Pizza Inn several years ago asking for their thin crust recipe and here's the response I got:

I don't remeber any raw flour, however it was VERY dry, and it was not in a ball but rather "chunks" of dough.

Last night, I made up two batches of dough. One with 3/4 cup water, the second with even less (I'd say about 5 1/2 fluid ounces). Both took a long time for the flour to incorporate into the dough. The resulting dough for each batch was "scrappy"... i.e., no complete ball formed, rather there are scraps and bits of dough in the bowl. By squeezing and compressing the scraps, I was able to get a ball to form.

Made two pizzas tonight using the DKM's "Pizza Inn" recipe. Made up two doughs last night and gave them a 24 hour rise at room temperature (70 degrees F.) First dough used 3/4 cup water, the other 5 1/2 to 6 fluid ounces water -- it was very dry and scrappy in the bowl after kneading for 10 minutes.

Ok. Here are the official results of this recipe:

In a word -- Truly AWESOME!!!

The first (with the 3/4 cup water) was great....

The second with 5 1/2 fl.oz. water -- better!!

Crust was thin, crunchy, and crisp --- truly "cracker like" !!!

Baked the pizzas in my standard cutter pan on the lowest rack in the oven... this was the trick to getting the crust to crisp up -- pan close to the heating element made all the difference in the world.

Ok, now that I've had a night's sleep... I like to share some more observations about this recipe.

1. DKM hit it right on the money... while the dough was "scrappy" after 10 minutes of kneading in the mixer bowl, it "came together" during the overnight rise... i.e., after squeezing the scraps together and putting them in the bucket to rise overnight, the next day the dough ball appeared "normal" ... it was a nice uniform ball of dough.

2. This dough did not need a lot of flour sprinkled on it or the work surface... the dough was so dry and dense that I had no problems with it sticking to anything while I was rolling it out.

3. I removed my pizza stone from the oven for this recipe. I set one rack at its lowest position. I set another rack half-way up. I cooked the pizza for 5 minutes on the middle rack, then I moved the pizza to the bottom rack to finish up the cooking. I used a standard non-preforated aluminum cutter pan which was lightly oiled with Crisco. The bottom browned nicely with the pan being so close to the heating element. Note: I opened the oven door occasionaly to let some heat out so that the heating element would kick back on... this kept the pan nice and hot and kept the bottom cooking!

NOTE: I did not pre-bake the crust using this recipe (nor did I need to!!)... just rolled out the dough, put it in the pan, docked, applied sauce, cheese, and toppings, then straight into the oven! Crisp, crisp, crisp!!

4. The second pizza, a SMOG (sausage, mushroom, onion, green pepper), was weighed down pretty heavily with toppings... even so, the crust was so crisp that you could hold a slice by its edge, supported in the middle with your thumb, and the slice kept its shape!! (i.e., no drooping or sagging)

This has got me thinking thin crust again but the last one I made had to much of a beer smell when I let it sit out overnight but it is much warmer now than it was when I made it last. I think this time I will make it the day before and let it rest in the cooler overnight then take it out first thing in the morning for supper that night.